Jewish Peace News (JPN) is an information service that circulates news clippings, analyses, editorial commentary, and action alerts concerning the Israel / Palestine conflict. We work to promote a just resolution to the conflict; we believe that the cause of both peace and justice will be served when Israel ends the occupation, withdrawing completely from the Palestinian territories and finding a solution to the Palestinian refugee crisis within the framework of international law.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Below you'll find a number of reports on the J Street conference:Some shorter entries from MuzzleWatch contributors Sydney Levy and Jesse Bacon, providing a flavor of some of the sessions, followed by a longer overview by Adam Horowitz of Mondoweiss.net

Racheli Gai.

Sydney Levy and Jesse Bacon report from J Street conference.

Doing the math at J Street: Nine is more than four

The most difficult moment for me at the J Street came this morning. I was listening to a panel called Messaging Pro-Israel Pro-Peace.

Jim Gerstein, the first panelist presented good polling data about the attitude of American Jews towards Israel and the US role in the region. Lots of good numbers here, the kind of numbers that AIPAC prefers to ignore.

The survey shows that 7 out of 10 American Jews support US policies that help Israelis and Palestinians resolve their conflict–and this includes the US publicly disagreeing with both sides as well as exerting pressure on both sides (in other words, disagreeing also with Israel and exerting pressure also on Israel).

Matt Dorf, the next panelist talked about communications and messaging: what we say matters a lot, he said.

Keep this in mind as we move to the third panelist, Dr. Calvin Goldscheider. Here comes demography to help us say what we need to say about being pro-Israel pro-peace.

Dr. Goldscheider did a rapid survey in no more than a few minutes about the changing ratio of Jews to Arabs in what is now Israel. In a few seconds, we heard about the role of Jewish immigration, the Russians (not all of them are Jewish), the temporary workers from Asia (now numbering a quarter of a million) so and so forth. Not a word about the Nakba, isn't that a bit odd?

But let's focus on the present. The question on the table, Is there a demographic threat?

The good news, says Dr. Goldscheider, is that in the context of the State of Israel, Arab minorities present no demographic threat unless we include the occupied territories and give the inhabitants there equal rights. Inclusion without equal rights leads to the end of democracy. Inclusion with equal rights leads to the end of the Jewish majority in the state. And that is why a two-state solution is a must: to preserve Jewish democracy.

The Palestinians are of course non-players in this Jewish democratic drama. At most, they are a threat just for being there. At best, they are a minority that we must keep under demographic control.

Oh, but the Palestinians are playing their part well. You see, in the 1960's Palestinians had an average of nine children per family. Now they only have four. (Phew).

Four children is a lot, but nine is a lot more, explains the kind demographer in case we cold not do the math. Audience laughs.

Now, I am Jewish and I am also a Latino man living in California–a state where we have a pluralistic demographic composition: not one group, not even non-Latino whites, amount to 50% of the population. If I were to hear white people bemoaning the demographic threat that the rise of people of color in the state represents, I would call it like it is, and that is racism, pure and simple. I have no use for the phrase demographic threat. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth and a sharp pain in my gut.

What we say matters a lot; that's what we were told in this workshop. If we need to use racism to message ourselves as Pro-Israel pro-peace, there is something very wrong here.

Is this the best J Street can come up with?

To be clear, I am not talking now about one-state, two-states, or three. I am talking about saying dayenu to this demographic threat mentality. I am talking about understanding fully and completely that you cannot save Israel's democracy one bit when you celebrate the fact that 20% of its citizens has an increasingly lower birth rate (yeay!) so that their proportion in the population will not grow (double yeay!). If this is what you believe, don't waste your time on avoiding the threat; you've lost the democratic values a long time ago.

My only consolation is that at least I can bring these issues to the public's attention — even to the attention of the J Street conference participants.

Were I to be in Israel this very week, I would be furiously fighting against a bill advancing in the Knesset that would bar the Israeli government from providing funding to activities that deny Israel's definition as a Jewish or democratic state.

– Sydney Levy

Bridging the gap with honesty and transparency

In an earlier post, I referred to a J Street workshop that sought to bridge the gap between Jewish social justice work and Israel/Palestine advocacy.

The gap is real. Take Jacob Feinspan, of Jews United for Justice. His organization works on a range of important local issues, including the challenges facing day laborers. He asked whether there was a litmus test for Jewish organizations: Does Israel have to be at the top of our agenda? He did not think so. He further asked a question that remained unanswered, why don't we have a reverse panel?, a panel about why J Street is not engaged in domestic social justice work.

Elissa Barrett, of the Progressive Jewish Alliance, drew inspiration from the prophetic tradition to make others uncomfortable and make ourselves uncomfortable. At the same time, she said that during the Gaza attack, the PJA issued a statement that was the source of much debate internally: how far do we go?. Two thirds of the conversation is about whether to have the conversation.

Alana Alpert, a rabbinical student, talked about the moral crisis that we face, and asked, Is there any issue more important for American Jews to engage in than Israel/Palestine? Her answer to her fellow panelists: To evade responsibility by claiming a domestic agenda–that's a false dichotomy.

Alana urged Jewish organizations to be more honest and transparent: If you are not doing Israel/Palestine work, why not? Is it really because you are solely focusing on domestic issues or is it because of funding concerns?

Elissa acknowledged that PJA has lost funders because of its positions on Israel. She added,

"We are afraid to be attacked because we are attacked. A line in the sand is there, and if you step across it, you will be crushed."

Susan Adelman, a founding member of PJA, drew an analogy to the ACLU's defense of the Nazi march in Skokie, IL. The ACLU lost thousands of members because of its position, and yet they stuck to its principles. She then asked, How can we not speak about human rights violations in the occupied territories?

A member of the audience talked about the current and possibly growing backlash against anti-occupation activism, and then she asked, Which side will the progressive Jews be on?

The next made-up controversy or orchestrated smear campaign will surely be reported in Muzzlewatch. And when things will get heated, I hope that we will be able to report that the majority of progressive Jews stood with us.

– Sydney Levy

Will J Street be the new gateway drug?

Will J Street be the new gateway drug? The thought has been running through my head ever since I heard Alana Alpert talking at a panel in the J Street conference examining the divide between the Jewish social justice activism and Israel/Palestine work. The panel dealt with the difficulties that organizations such as the Progressive Jewish Alliance and Jews United for Justice have in moving beyond a domestic social justice agenda and addressing the Israeli occupation. Facing the gap between Jewish activism on domestic issues versus Israel/Palestine, Alana asked whether Jewish social justice organizing was the gateway drug to deal with the Middle East.

The thought has been dancing in my head throughout the whole day, only now taking it one step forward: Will J Street be the new gateway drug that will move liberal Jewish activists who are pro-Israel pro-peace into being progressive Jewish activists fully pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian?

This is not just an academic play of words. We are talking about having an agenda that focuses on what's good for both sides, not just for the love of Israel.

I confess that the J Street's conference urgency to reach a two-state solution — although I am yet to hear the word viable attached to the Palestinian state — seems to be motivated more by the upcoming facts on the ground (demographic changes that put in peril the concept of a Jewish majority) than by the current facts on the ground (settlements and the rest of the occupation infrastructure).

Will J Street be the gateway drug that moves activists from the demographic head-count into the field of universal justice and human rights? Only time will tell. But the conference certainly offered some signs for hope. Every item that was not in the agenda — BDS, Zionism, Jewish state — came up for discussion one way or another because it was brought up from the floor. These questions have no easy answers, but time and again they will pop up until they are considered with the seriousness they deserve.

– Sydney Levy

Not to be taken literally

I attended what turned out to be the replacement for J street's disinvited poet panel. Ari Roth from Theater J — who supported the poets by coming out to their reading yesterday at BusBoys & Poets — used the beginning of his time to alert people to the panel that was and delivered a passionate defense of poets from a literary perspective.

Ari urged not taking the words literally and pointed out that one "doesn't look to poets for rational discourse." He defended the "right to conjoin symbols," and asked if "a wonky convention like J Street is comfortable with metaphor." He dismissed any suggestion that anyone was calling for a boycott of J Street, creating a "truly J Street dialectic: pro-conference and pro-poetry (a play of words on J Street's tag line, pro-Israel, pro-peace), which led to applause.

He posed two possibilities: we are either entering a "new age of censoriousness" or an "excitement moment," and noted what great plays have been performed at Theater J, including "Seven Jewish Children," and a play featuring both Rachel Corrie and Daniel Pearl. All in all, it was a hopeful moment for both art and the conference, whatever the larger moment we live in.

I've finally reemerged from J Street. Although I intended to be posting throughout the conference, I never found the time. It was a packed few days, with energy bursting at the seams. Although usually subdued and rehearsed from the podium, the crowd was brimming with questions, challenges and a rebellious spirit.

My very initial impression was that If AIPAC feels like going to the Jewish Oscars, then J Street felt like a really fancy bar mitzvah. It was large and impressive, but did not have the ostentatious sense of stage production and drama that AIPAC displays, and I guess that's to be expected. I don't think it's only a matter of resources (which I'm sure play a part), but also of mission. The AIPAC conference seems to say – sit and let us overwhelm you, with facts, with fear, with theater – while J Street was conscious from the beginning that it was more self-reflexive and open. AIPAC was focused of handing out marching orders, and J Street has taken on a more vexing, complicated and perhaps self-defeating mission – to be a vehicle for both social change and political change inside the American Jewish community.

This dual mission was seen from the very first event, a town hall-style plenary session called "Israel and 21st Century American Jewry." Jeremy Ben-Ami explained that this was to be "more than a policy conference," it was also part of breaking the isolation people felt in their communities. And it's clear that breaking this isolation is what drew many people to the conference. As Phil pointed out earlier there was excessive handwringing across the three days of the conference as Jews struggled with breaking the vice grip of a pro-Israel orthodoxy in their community which says you must support Israeli expansionism and apartheid at all costs. The real energy at this conference came from the vast majority of the 1,500 attendees who said "no more!", and this was Ben-Ami's most effective rallying cry. J Street is playing a tricky game at trying to harness the dissatisfaction and anger in the Jewish community towards its traditional gatekeepers without letting that energy run wildbeyond its control. It's telling that the only person booed at the conference, as far as I know, was Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the most representative member of that orthodoxy to address the conference. It seemed to be a slightly embarrassing moment for J Street as its conference goers where rebuking an honored guest, but after two days of being revved by talk of opening the debate and hearing all voices – what did they expect? Rabbi Brant Rosen, who I had the honor of finally meeting in person, observed that J Street has opened a Pandora's box in promoting dissent while trying to manage it. He doubted it could be controlled once the box was opened.

This energy and questioning sprit (to borrow Dana Goldstein's term) was seen in every single panel I attended. Although speakers presented dry presentations on the the two-state solution or the current debate in Washington, questions from the audience would inevitably veer off the map towards questions of historical justice for the Palestinians and the viability and desirably of a Jewish state. Several questioners made clear their discomfort trying to justify the contradiction between advocating for the Jewish-defined state in Israel/Palestine while enjoying the privileges of a minority in a multicultural democracy here in the United States. This was usually met with a response along the line of "there has always been a tension between universalism and particularism in Jewish life" or something like that, but the dodge wasn't lost on anyone. The questions bubbling up in the Jewish community were beyond the pale for J Street, and for an organization that is supposed to represent anew discussion about the Middle East in Washington and the Jewish community, it already seemed woefully behind the times.

Jeremy Ben-Ami has said it himself that he sees the organization as a US equivalent of the Israeli Kadima party. J Street is looking to advance the two-state solution, and although there was plenty of sympathy, and perhaps empathy, for the Palestinian people, the motivating factor in building a Palestinian state is to protect a Jewish-majority state in Israel. This was said repeatedly by both Israeli and American Jewish speakers. For a liberal group there was a disturbing amount of time given to talking about "demographic threats" and head counts of Jews versus Palestinians in Israel/Palestine. It is a conversation that many there would denounce as racist if it were to happen here in the US regarding latino or african-american US citizens, and I would say that there was ambivalent support for the conversation at J Street. If AIPAC attempts to motivate their base through the perennial fear of an impending holocaust, then J Street's fear mongering takes a more ethno-nationalistapproach that seems more in line with Lou Dobbs than the liberal heros that J Street attendees most likely adore. There were murmurs of dissatisfaction in the crowd over this, but I could see this discomfort growing by leaps and bounds in the months and years to come.

And this is in part the dilemma that J Street finds itself in. At its heart J Street is a Washington DC political organization that is trying to harness the power of social change in the Jewish community towards rather conservative political ends. Boxed into Washington's language on the conflict (willingly), the organization seems in danger of alienating an activist base who increasingly understands this discourse to be irrelevant. One questioner in a panel called "What does it mean to be Pro-Israel" said he wants to go home to Santa Fe and help build J Street, but he knows their "Pro-Israel" moniker will alienate people. How long will J Street supporters flock to an organization that demands the debate be opened – but only so much? Several speakers reinforced that it was fine to criticize Israel, as long as it's from a place of love. One questioner responded, "But what if instead I love justice?," to some firm applause. In the end I imagine J Street will continue to evade thisquestion as it looks to build power in a city where calls for justice routinely go unanswered.

Finally, there is a more fundamental question as J Street tries to square the circle between harnessing the social change within the Jewish community to promote political change in Washington – where does this leave other Americans concerned with its country's foreign policy? And more importantly where does it leave Palestinians? The mission to move US policy through reforming the Jewish community's debate over Israel/Palestine has clear political implications. Ben-Ami ended the opening evening by saying the movement J Street is a part of is a "movement rooted in love of Israel," and while all are welcomed to join J Street in its work, "the heart of this movement has to be in the Jewish community." From this perspective, it was telling that Gaza was not mentioned once the entire evening (except by Rabbi Andy Bachman who said it was no longer occupied). There was only one panel during the entire conference dedicated to "Palestinian perspectives," and even the closing panel called"Why Two States? Why Now?" only included speakers to explain Israeli interests and American interests in promoting two states. Two of the most moving parts of the conference for me was hearing Laila El-Haddad, from the Gaza Mom blog, describe life in still occupied Gaza on the unofficial blogger's panel. She told a story about how her family was almost unable to leave Gaza to visit her in the US and she is totally unable to enter her homeland. Later, Bassim Khoury, the ex-Minister of National Economy for the Palestinian Authority who recently quit in protest to their reaction to the Goldstone report, demonstrated "Israeli apartheid" in Jerusalem through a power point presentation outlining the gross discrepancies in municipal funding between Jews and Palestinians in the city. Both presentation injected an intense dose of reality into a proceeding that seems to be chugging along more on vision and hope.

J Street represents a very important rupture and opportunity in the supposed American Jewish consensus over Israel/Palestine which should be celebrated. Pushing this wedge into the heart of the community could only be a good thing. But, the tenor and message of the J Street conference would seem to indicate that the struggle to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be lead by Jews, after we conquer our own internal issues to reform our community, and on our agenda. Meanwhile, Palestinians will have to continue to catch the brunt of the Israel everyone loves so much.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

In a MuzzleWatch, Ceclie Surasky relates How J Street booted poet Josh Healey from their meet.This, writes Surasky, "is interesting in part because it follows J Street's vigorous defense of Israeli artistic expression as part of the Toronto International Film Festival's celebratory spotlight on Tel Aviv. (J Street, like numerous other groups, mistakenly used the term boycott to describe the Toronto Declaration protest. The Declaration opposed the focus on Tel Aviv as part of the Brand Israel campaign but explicitly did not call for a boycott. On the other hand, it might be technically accurate to call the booting of Healey an actual form of boycott.)

Yesterday, we reported that J Street canceled the poetry session at their upcoming conference because a right-wing blogger discovered that poet Josh Healey had invoked the Holocaust to write about Palestinians and the war on terror. (Healey was invited to present by J Street staff, and not Theater J as we incorrectly reported).

This cancellation is interesting in part because it follows J Street's vigorous defense of Israeli artistic expression as part of the Toronto International Film Festival's celebratory spotlight on Tel Aviv. (J Street, like numerous other groups, mistakenly used the term boycott to describe the Toronto Declaration protest. The Declaration opposed the focus on Tel Aviv as part of the Brand Israel campaign but explicitly did not call for a boycott. On the other hand, it might be technically accurate to call the booting of Healey an actual form of boycott.)

Healey doesn't hold back in this interview today, Poet booted from J Street meet for comparing Guantanamo to Auschwitz, in Haaretz :

"I had a conversation with 'J Street' staff, and they explained that they are playing the game - Washington politics, and seeking legitimacy. And they are not willing to fight this battle. I was born in Washington, so I'm not surprised to become Van Jones of J Street," (U.S. President Barack Obama's "green jobs czar" who resigned over the controversy about his past political associations).

"So Van Jones resigned, but did the right wing stop attacking Obama? On one level, I understand them - it's easier to get rid of the poet, who cares? But as an artist and a Jewish activist, it's a matter of principle. If you're trying to be an alternative to AIPAC - don't behave like AIPAC."

"I told them I don't think it's the legitimacy they want, because it's not the legitimacy that makes change. When you're trying to make change, you must expect that some people will push back. But they kick out their allies - and I still consider myself an ally. I'm not personally offended - I'm politically disappointed. It's ironic that we were invited to perform and be a part of the dialogue at the track 'The culture as a tool for change.' But we can't even have this dialogue. The Jewish community acts like children, with smear campaigns and name-calling. I am not surprised by the right wing attacks - but that J-Street went along with it and accommodated it."

Referring to the specific line which stirred the negative emotions, Healey said: "It was taken of context. Judged by themselves, these lines don't even make sense. Just before this line, I wrote: 'I remember when the German soldiers put yellow stars on my family coats and they put pink ones on my friends.' I was talking about de-humanization. And yes, I have family that was killed in the Holocaust. There were Jewish people killed and gay people and Gypsies, and many others, and as a Jew, my solidarity is with my people - and with all people. And my solidarity is with the people of Israel - but also with the people of Palestine. And I believe in two state solution and peace and justice for all people. And if J-Street are not willing to have debate with people who believe in solidarity and humanity, I don't know what legitimacy they want, because it's not a moral legitimacy."

"I love my people, the Jewish people, and that's why I'm critical - because it's my people, my family that are silencing people the same way we were silenced and suppressed for centuries," Healey concluded.

And here as a longer statement from Healey and fellow banned poet Kevin Coval, who wrote, "The reason J Street put us out to dry is because they feel more accountable to the Right-wing than to us. Let's change that, and open up the debate."

Searching for a Minyan: Israel, McCarthyism, & the Struggle for Real Dialogue

by Kevin Coval and Josh Healey

This weekend, J Street, a new Jewish "Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace" PAC and Washington-based organization is holding its first national conference. The two of us, along with another artist, were to perform and read poems at several sessions during the conference. Specifically, we were invited to lead a workshop on how culture and spoken word create democratic spaces that sift through difficult issues and ensure a multiplicity of voices are heard: and how that can be used to open up the Israel/Palestine debate. Instead, we have been censored and pushed out of that very debate.

This week, some right-wing blogs and pseudo-news organizations latched on to various lines of poems Josh wrote and churned the alarmist rumor mill saying that hateful anti-Israeli poets are keynote speakers at the J Street conference. This is not surprising. The radical right-wing, including the growing Jewish right-wing of this country and abroad, hates complex discourse, especially when it brings to light truths they seek to systematically deny. The Weekly Standard, Commentary, and their AIPAC-influenced brethren have been attacking J Street for weeks, scared that the conference will bring together the majority of American Jews who do favor a more rigorous peace process. When they found Josh's poems and took lines out of context, they had the perfect straw man: the Van Jones to J Street's Obama. Again, this is not surprising.

What is disappointing, and troubling, is J Street's response in caving to this sort of McCarthyism. The executive director of J Street called us to say "I know what I'm doing is wrong…but there are some battles we choose not to fight," before canceling our program, and disinviting us from the conference. This accommodates their red-baiting and is the wrong response. Rather than give in, which only emboldens the right and legitimizes their attacks, we need to stand up for our principles and engage on that front. Van Jones is another perfect example: after the Fox News venom became too much and he resigned last month, the radical Right hasn't stopped attacking Obama, or more accurately, the alternative, progressive voice they fear he represents. The Right stands by its politics, and practices solidarity with their allies. Too often the Left doesn't. And that's why we often lose – on health care, on global warming, and on Israel/Palestine.

For the second time in two months Kevin, who is Jewish, has been told not to come to a Jewish conference because of what he will say about Palestine and Israel. This past August, the evening before the International Hillel Conference, conference planners said if he were to read poems about Palestine, they'd rather not have him. Today, Josh, who is Jewish, has had his name thrown into a mudslide of blogs and hate emails. All this because we are practicing the Jewish maxim of the refusal to be silent in the face of oppression, anyone's oppression.

One of the key teachings of Judaism is the insistence on wrestling with and debating ideas. There are a thousand years of codified arguing, recorded in the Talmud and Midrash, over the meaning of the stories in the five books of Torah. Jews debate everything. There is the old adage, "when you have two Jews in the room, you have three opinions". Our families cannot come to agreement about what constitutes a deli as opposed to a diner. (A deli must have pickles on the table with poppy seed rolls, etc….)

But when you try to talk about Palestine there is silence. When you talk about the role the United States plays in supporting Israel and its military coffers, there is no room for discourse. If you bring up Palestinians' right to return to land they were forced out of, or mention that this past January over 1400 Palestinians, mostly civilian, were killed in Gaza, there is no room to speak in Jewish-centric spaces in this country.

There are many reasons why this trend of censorship is disturbing. We believe in democracy, in the right to speak and be heard and in the right be disagreed with. We are disheartened and outraged by the lack of democratic discourse in the American Jewish community and within the country as a whole.

Why are we scared of what will come from an honest conversation? What do we have to lose, or discover, or admit to if we question the policies of Israel or America's support of its government and military? It can be unsettling for one's worldview to unravel, the intricate web of white lies and half-truths pulled apart. This can be disconcerting for generations of Jews who have accepted the propaganda of a chosen people and the acting out of geostrategic nightmares via military might.

Kevin works at a Hillel for Hashem's sake! He is charged with the task of addressing why so many young Jews are distancing themselves from the religious and cultural practice of Judaism. This is one of those reasons! American Jews are told at shul to repent for our sins, but silenced if we bring up the sins of the country that acts in our name. We need authentic, honest discourse in the American Jewish community. It must start today and it must be about Palestine and Israel.

So, we are searching for a minyan—a crew of progressives and progressive Jews to build and connect with. We want to have a conversation. Not wait for the conversation to be dictated and have borders and walls built around acceptable topics, but to have a conversation determined by us, Jews That Are Left, that are on the Left. A conversation that is honest and open and genuinely reclaims and considers our progressive past as well as forges the future world. A conversation engaged in the work of tikkun olam for real, the work of repair and healing and wholeness.

Progressive American Jews where you at? Holla at us! For real: jewsthatareleft@gmail.com. Let's reshape the conversation. Let's build a minyan, a coalition of progressive Jews and gentiles who want what is just and right for ALL people and all people in Israel and Palestine.

Editor's note: the space that Kevin and Josh imagine for progressive Jews and allies "who want what is just and right for ALL people and all people in Israel and Palestine" already exists and it's called Jewish Voice for Peace.

Monday, October 19, 2009

Ramzy Baroud writes: "the post-Oslo culture has espoused a class of contractors. These are businessmen who are either high-ranking officials in the PA and the Fatah party, or both, or closely affiliated with them. Much of the billions of dollars of international aid that poured into Palestine following the signing of Oslo found its way into private bank accounts. Wealth generated more wealth and "export and import" companies sprung up like poison ivy amidst the poor dwelling of refugees throughout the occupied territories. The class of businessmen, still posing as revolutionaries, encroached over every aspect of Palestinian society, used it, controlled it, and eventually suffocated it. It espoused untold corruption, and, naturally, found an ally in Israel, whose reign in the occupied territories never ceased." This class is more interested in profit than in Palestinian self determination. Abbas belongs to this elite, and it's not clear that removing him will bring improvement, since his place might be taken by someone with similar interests and culture.

As Israeli bombs fell on the Gaza Strip during its one-sided war between December 27, 2008 and January 18, 2009, millions around the world took to the streets in complete and uncompromising outrage. The level of barbarity in that war, especially as it was conducted against a poor, defenseless and physically trapped nation, united people of every color, race and religion. But among those who seemed utterly unmoved, unreservedly cold were some Palestinian officials in the West Bank.

Mahmoud Habbash, the PA Minister of Social Affairs is but one of those individuals. His appearances on Aljazeera, during those fateful days were many. On one half of the screen would be screaming, disfigured children, mutilated women, and search parties digging in the dark for dead bodies, at times entire families. On the other, was Habbash, spewing political insults at his Hamas rivals in Gaza, repeating the same message so tirelessly parroted by his Israeli colleagues. Every time his face appeared on the screen, I cringed. Every unruly shriek of his, reinforced my sense of shame. Shame, perhaps, but never confusion. Those who understand how the Oslo agreement of September 1993 morphed into a culture that destroyed the very fabric of Palestinian society can fully appreciate the behavior of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank during the Gaza war, before it and today.

But especially today.

Those who hoped that the Israeli atrocities in Gaza would rekindled a sense of remorse among the egotistical elites in Ramallah, were surely disappointed when the PA withdrew its draft resolution supporting recommendations made by South African Judge Richard Goldstone. The Goldstone report is the most comprehensive, and transparent investigation as of yet into what happened in Gaza during the 23-day war. It decried Israeli terror, and chastised Palestinians as well. But the focus on Israel undoubtedly and deservingly occupied much of the nearly 600-page report. The next step was for the Human Rights Council to send the report for consideration to the United Nations Security Council, which was to study the findings for a possible referral of the case to the International Criminal Court e in the Hague. Such a move would have been historic. Knowing the full implications of such a possibility, Hamas accepted the report's recommendations in full. Israel, backed by its traditional US ally,rejected it, leveling all sorts of accusations and insults on the world-renowned Jewish judge.

The draft resolution - condemning Israel and calling for the transfer of the report to the UNSC - was due for a vote at the Council on October 2. Alas, it was withdrawn at the behest of the Palestinian Authority and its president Mahmoud Abbas himself. Palestinian friends and allies at UNHRC were shocked, but obliged. They were equally disappointed when they watched PA envoys discussing the matter, not with the Asian, African or other traditional allies at the Council, but with US and European diplomats, who seemed to have a greater sway over Palestinian political action than those who have for decades supported Palestinian rights at every turn.

Something went horribly wrong. How could a leader of an occupied and suffering nation commit such a 'mistake', deferring an urgent vote and discussion on a report pertaining to the death of over 1,400 people, the maiming and wounding of thousands more, to a later date, six months from today?

Theories flared. Israeli and other media argued that US pressure on PA president Mahmoud Abbas was the main reason behind the supposedly unanticipated move. A positive vote on the resolution would jeopardize the 'peace process', therefore any action must be stifled for the sake of giving the 'peace process' a chance, was the rationale.

Amira Hass of Haaretz opined, "The chronic submissiveness is always explained by a desire to 'make progress.' But for the PLO and Fatah, progress is the very continued existence of the Palestinian Authority, which is now functioning more than ever before as a subcontractor for the IDF, the Shin Bet security service and the Civil Administration."

Jonathan Cook, however, offered another view: "Israel warned it would renege on a commitment to allot radio frequencies to allow Wataniya, a mobile phone provider, to begin operations this month in the West Bank. The telecommunications industry is the bedrock of the Palestinian economy, with the current monopoly company, PalTel, accounting for half the worth of the Palestinian stock exchange."

"No blood for mobile phones," should perhaps be the new chant in Palestine. But it's that sad fact that held the Palestinian will hostage for too many years. However, it's not just mobile companies whose interests triumph over Gaza's agony. Indeed, the post-Oslo culture has espoused a class of contractors. These are businessmen who are either high-ranking officials in the PA and the Fatah party, or both, or closely affiliated with them. Much of the billions of dollars of international aid that poured into Palestine following the signing of Oslo found its way into private bank accounts. Wealth generated more wealth and "export and import" companies sprung up like poison ivy amidst the poor dwelling of refugees throughout the occupied territories. The class of businessmen, still posing as revolutionaries, encroached over every aspect of Palestinian society, used it, controlled it, and eventually suffocated it. It espoused untold corruption, and, naturally, found an ally in Israel,whose reign in the occupied territories never ceased.

The PA became submissive not out of fear of Israeli wrath per se, but out of fear that such wrath would disrupt business, the flow of aid thus contracts. And since corruption is not confined by geographical borders, PA officials abroad took Palestinian shame to international levels. Millions marched in the US, in Europe, in Asia, South America and the rest of the world, chanting for Gaza and its victims, while some PA ambassadors failed to even turn out to participate. When some of these diplomats made it to public forums, it was for the very purpose of brazenly attacking fellow Palestinians in Hamas, not to garner international solidarity with their own people.

Readily blaming 'American pressure' to explain Abbas' decision at the UNHRC no longer suffices. Even the call on the 74-year-old Palestinian leader to quit is equally hollow. Abbas represents a culture, and that culture is self-seeking, self-serving and utterly corrupt. If Abbas exits, and considering his age, he soon will, Mohammed Dahlan could be the next leader, or even Mahmoud Habbash, who called on Gaza to rebel against Hamas as Israel was blowing up Palestinian homes and schools left and right.

Palestinians who are now calling for change following the UN episode, must consider the Oslo culture in its entirety, its 'revolutionary' millionaires, its elites and contractors. A practical alternative to those corrupt must be quickly devised. The Israeli wall is encroaching on Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank, and a new war might be awaiting besieged Gaza. Time is running out, and our collective shame is nearly complete.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London), and his forthcoming book is, "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (Pluto Press, London).

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Michel Warschawski (Mikado) - a veteran activist in struggles against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and to democratize Israel since shortly after the 1967 war - replies to Uri Avnery's rejection of the tactic of Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions. Mikado argues that "peace" is not a goal in itself, since that would reflect the existing balance of forces in the region and globally. Rather, peace is a means to achieve "basic individual and collective rights, end of domination and oppression, decolonization, equality, and as-much-justice-as-possible." BDS is a tactic aimed at involving the international community to rectify the imbalance of forces so as to achieve the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people (a concept not in the lexicon of the "pro-Israel, pro-peace" forces). Mikado also argues that the political debate is not between those who favor one or two states as a resolution of the conflict. Rather it is between those who regardpeace as an end in itself and those who believe that because Israel is a colonial settler state, justice cannot be achieved without decolonizing Israel (which I would say entails ending the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and installing a democratic domestic regime) and that "whether the final result of that de-colonization will be a one-state solution, two democratic states (i.e. not a "Jewish State"), a federation or any other institutional structure is secondary." Mikado concludes with a call for Israelis to join the "Boycott from Within" campaign and chides those who have rejected armed struggle that it [would] be outrageous that this strategy too will be disqualified. –Joel Beinin

The call for BDS – Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions – has finally reached Israeli public opinion. The decision of Norway to divest capitals from Israeli corporations involved in settlement buildings made the difference, and provided the first big success to that important campaign.

Moreover, the group of Israelis supporting BDS, under the label "Boycott from Within" is gaining some momentum, thanks, among other, to a public appeal by Naomi Klein to Israeli activists when she came to Tel Aviv to present the Hebrew version of her "Shock Doctrine".

The fact that there is an (even small) Israeli voice to support the international BDS campaign makes a lot of difference, and, among other, helps to disarm the infamous accusation of Anti-Semitism raised by the Israeli propaganda machine against everyone who dare to criticize the colonial policies of the Jewish State. Moreover, as I will argue towards the end of this article, the Israeli supporters of BDS are in fact expressing the true and long-term interests of the Israeli people. Reading recently two texts of Uri Avnery criticizing BDS convinced me that it was important to clarify how positive is that campaign and why should it be supported by as many Israelis as possible.

I sometimes disagree with Avnery's opinions – though much less than in the past – but I have great respect for the man, the journalist, the activist and the analyst, and since the bankruptcy of Peace Now during the Oslo process, we have been closely active together. I may even say that we became friends. This is why I feel compel to react to his criticism of the BDS campaign.

In order to present in the most accurate way Uri's position, I will not use paraphrases, but quote what I think to be his main arguments.

(…) I HAVE no argument with people who hate Israel. That's entirely their right. I just don't think that we have any common ground for discussion.

I would only like to point out that hatred is a very bad advisor. Hatred leads nowhere, but to more hatred. That, by the way, is a positive lesson we can draw from the South African experience. There they overcame hatred to a remarkable extent, largely thanks to the "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" headed by Archbishop Tutu, where people admitted their past offenses.

One thing is certain: hatred does not lead towards peace. Let me be quite explicit about this, because I sense that some people, in their righteous indignation over Israel's occupation, have lost sight of this.Peace is made between enemies, after war, in which awful things invariably happen. Peace can be made and maintained between peoples who are prepared to live with each other, respect each other, recognize the humanity of each other. They don't have to love each other (…)

I ALSO have no argument with those who want to abolish the State of Israel. It is as much their right to aspire to that as it is my right to want to dismantle, let's say, the USA or France, neither of which has an unblemished past.

Reading some of the messages sent to me and trying to analyze their contents, I get the feeling they are not so much about a boycott on Israel as about the very existence of Israel. Some of the writers obviously believe that the creation of the State of Israel was a terrible mistake to start with, and therefore should be reversed. Turn the wheel of history back some 62 years and start anew.

What really disturbs me about this is that almost nobody in the West comes out and says clearly: Israel must be abolished. Some of the proposals, like those for a "One State" solution, sound like euphemisms. If one believes that the State of Israel should be abolished and replaced by a State of Palestine or a State of Happiness – why not say so openly?Of course, that does not mean peace. Peace between Israel and Palestine presupposes that Israel is there. Peace between the Israeli people and the Palestinian people presupposes that both peoples have a right to self-determination and agree to the peace. Does anyone really believe that racist monsters like us would agree to give up our state because of a boycott? (…)

THE REAL argument is among those who want to see peace between the two states, Israel and Palestine. The question is: how can it be achieved? This is an honest debate and is generally conducted in a civil manner (…)The advocates of boycott believe that the main, indeed the only way to induce Israel to give up the occupied territories and agree to peace is to exert pressure from the outside.

I have no quarrel with the idea of outside pressure. The question is: pressure on whom? On the government, the settlers and their supporters? Or on the entire Israeli people?

(…) The struggle is on, it is a hard struggle against determined opposition, and we should do all we can to help Obama's peace policy to prevail. We must do this as Israelis, from inside Israel, and thereby show that this is not a struggle of the US against Israel, but a joint struggle against the Israeli government and the settlers.

It follows that any boycott must serve this purpose: to isolate the settlers and the individuals and institutions which openly support them, but not declare war on Israel and the Israeli people as such. In the 11 years since Gush Shalom declared a boycott of the products of the settlements, this process has been gaining momentum. We must laud the Norwegian decision, this week, to divest from the Israeli Elbit company because of their involvement with the "Separation Fence" that is being built on Palestinian land and whose main purpose is to annex occupied territories to Israel. This is a splendid example: a focused action against a specific target, based on a ruling of the International Court.

(…) I have been asked about the Palestinian reaction to the boycott idea. At present, Palestinians do not boycott even the settlements, indeed it is Palestinian workers who are building almost all the houses there, out of economic necessity. Their feelings can only be guessed. All self-respecting Palestinians would, of course, support any effective measure directed against the occupation. But it would not be honest to dangle before their eyes the false hope that a world-wide boycott would bring Israel to its knees. The truth is that only the close cooperation of Palestinian, Israeli and international peace forces could generate the necessary momentum to end the occupation and achieve peace.

This is especially important because our task in Israel today is not so much to convince the majority of Israelis that peace is good and the price acceptable, but first that peace is possible at all. Most Israelis have lost that hope, and its revival is absolutely vital on the way to peace (…)

Let's start with what I consider to be a false debate. First: "Hatred is a very bad advisor" writes Uri, and I will be the last to disagree with him. I know also that he will agree with me if I add that, in our political context, hatred is understandable. Second: "Israel is not South Africa". Of course it isn't, and every concrete reality is different from the other. Nevertheless, these two countries have some similarities: both are racist states with (different kinds of) apartheid systems (the literal meaning of apartheid being "structural separation"). Both countries were established as "European states" in a national/ethical environment composed of non-European who were considered as a hostile environment, and rightly so.

We do also agree – and this is even more important – that in order to achieve substantial results in our struggle, we need to build a joint dynamics including the Palestinian national resistance, the Israeli anti-occupation forces and the international solidarity movement. Ten years ago, I call it "the winning triangle".

A lot in common indeed until comes Uri's misrepresentation of his political opponents: "(They) have despaired of the Israelis". If it would have been so, why those Israeli BDS campaigners would spare so much of their time in building, together with Uri Avnery, an Israeli movement against war, occupation and colonization? The true debate is not between those who aim to "change the Israeli society" and those who don't, but how and for what.

The political goal of Uri Avnery is "an Israeli-Palestinian peace", i.e. a compromise that should satisfy the majority of the two communities, on a symmetrical basis (in another important article, he called it "truth against truth"). Such symmetry is the result of another important political assumption by Avnery: the conflict in Palestine is a conflict between two national movements with equal legitimacy.Many supporters of the BDS campaign disagree on both assumptions: our goal is not peace as such, because "peace" in itself doesn't mean anything (almost every war in modern history was initiated under the pretext of achieving peace). Peace is always the reflection of relation of forces when one side cannot impose to the other all what he considers being its legitimate rights.

Unlike Uri, our goal is the fulfillment of certain values like: basic individual and collective rights, end of domination and oppression, decolonization, equality, and as-much-justice-as-possible. In that framework, we obviously may support "peace initiatives" that can reduce the level of violence and/or achieve a certain amount of rights. In our strategy, however, this support to peace initiatives is not a goal in itself but merely a means to achieve the mentioned-above values and rights.

That difference about "peace" and "justice" is connected to the divergence concerning the second assumption of Uri Avnery, the symmetry between two equally legitimate national movements and aspirations.For us, Zionism is not a national liberation movement but a colonial movement, and the State of Israel is and has always been a settlers' colonial state. Peace, or, better, justice, cannot be achieved without a total decolonization (one can say de-Zionisation) of the Israeli State; it is a precondition for the fulfillment of the legitimate rights of the Palestinians – whether refugees, living under military occupation or second-class citizens of Israel. Whether the final result of that de-colonization will be a "one-state" solution, two democratic states (i.e. not a "Jewish State"), a federation or any other institutional structure is secondary, and will ultimately be decided by the struggle itself and the level of participation of Israelis, if at all.

In that sense, Uri Avnery is wrong when he states that our divergences is about "one state" or "two states". As explained above, the divergence is on rights, decolonization and the principle of full equality. The form of the solution is, in my opinion, irrelevant as long as we are speaking about a solution in which the two peoples are living in freedom (without colonial relationships) and equality.

Another important divergence with Uri Avnery concerns the Israeli psyche and the dialectics between the Palestinian National liberation agenda and the so-call Israeli peace camp. While it is obvious that the Palestinian national movement needs as many Israeli allies as possible to achieve liberation as quick as possible and with as less suffering as possible for both people, one cannot expect the Palestinian movement to wait until Uri and the other Israeli anti-colonialists will convince the majority of the Israeli public opinion. For two reasons: first, because popular national movements do not wait to fight oppression and colonialism; second, because history has taught us that changes within the colonialist society has always been the result of the liberation struggle, and not the other way round: when the price for occupation is becoming too high, more and more people understand that it is nor worth to continue it.

Generally speaking, one can say that the Israeli mind is shaped by two realities, or, more accurately, one reality and one perception of reality. The reality shaping the Israeli psyche is the colonial reality of the Israeli existence, the feeling of being surrounded by a hostile environment which, to say the least, feels threaten by the dynamics of Zionist colonization. The other factor shaping Israeli collective mentality is anti-Semitism (real and constructed) strengthen by the experience of the Nazi judeocide.

Like any other people, the Israelis want to be accepted, loved even. They have, however a double difficulty: to pay the needed price for this acceptance, i.e. behaving in a civilized manner, and to trust the other in his attempt to normalize relations with them.

Yes, a hand extended for co-existence is needed, but together with an iron fist fighting for rights and freedom. The failure of the Oslo process confirms a very old lesson of history: any attempt for reconciliation before the fulfillment of rights strengthens the continuation of the colonial domination relationship. Without a price to be paid, why should the Israelis stop colonization, why should they risk a deep internal crisis?

This is where the BDS campaign is so relevant: it offers an international framework to act in order to help the Palestinian people achieving its legitimate rights, both on the institutional level (states and international institutions) and the civil society's one. On the one hand it is addressed to the international community, asking it to sanction a State that is systematically violating international law, UN resolutions, the Geneva Conventions and signed agreements; on the other hand, it is addressed to the international civil society to act, as individuals as well as social movements (trade-unions, parties, local councils, popular associations etc) to boycott goods, official representatives, institutions etc. that represent the colonial State of Israel.

Both tasks (boycott and sanctions) will eventually be a pressure of the Israeli people, pushing it to understand that occupation and colonization have a price, that violating the international rules may, sooner or later, made the State of Israel a paria-country, not welcomed in the civilized community of nations. Like South Africa in the last decades of apartheid. In that sense, and unlike Uri's claim, BDS is addressed to the Israeli public and, right now, is the only way to provoke a change in its attitude towards occupation/colonization. If one compares it to the anti-apartheid BDS campaign that took twenty years to start bearing real fruits, one cannot but be surprised how efficient the anti-Israeli occupation campaign has already been, and even in Israel we can already witness its first effects.

The BDS campaign was initiated by a broad coalition of Palestinian political and social movements. No Israeli who claims to support the national rights of the Palestinian people can, decently, turns it back to that campaign: after having claimed for years that "armed struggle is not the way", it will be outrageous that this strategy too will be disqualified by those Israeli activists. On the contrary, we have all together to join "Boycott from within" in order to provide an Israeli backup to that Palestinian initiative. It is the minimum we can do, it is the minimum we should do.

Michel Warschawski is a journalist and writer and a founder of the Alternative Information Center (AIC) in Israel. His books include On the Border (South End Press) and Towards an Open Tomb - the Crisis of Israeli Society (Monthly Review Press).

Friday, October 9, 2009

This week the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva was to vote on a resolution to refer the report of the UN fact finding mission led by South African jurist Richard Goldstone to the UN Security Council for further action. Goldstone's investigation concluded that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes during Israel's assault on Gaza in December 2008-January 2009. Israel and the US worked overtime to get the Human Rights Council to postpone considering the resolution for six months. Ha-Aretz correspondent Amira Hass reports that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas instructed the PLO representative in Geneva to collaborate with the US-Israeli effort and abandon support for the resolution. Abbas's action aroused a storm of protest among Palestinians around the world (for an example of the vociferous Palestinian denunciations of Abbas see the editorial of Ali Abunimah on the Electronic Intifada website, http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10807.shtml). Hass arguesthat Abbas could have adopted the path of pursuing "negotiations as part of a popular struggle anchored in the language of the universal culture of equality and rights." Abandoning that option means that, "Hamas is the real national leadership." If this conclusion is correct, its implications are potentially far reaching. If the Palestinians who Israel is willing to negotiate with (in principle, even if not in practice) do not constitute a credible national leadership, then there is no prospect for a negotiated resolution of the conflict in the foreseeable future. – Joel Beinin

In a single phone call to his man in Geneva, Mahmoud Abbas has demonstrated his disregard for popular action, and his lack of faith in its accumulative power and the place of mass movements in processes of change.

For nine months, thousands of people - Palestinians, their supporters abroad and Israeli anti-occupation activists - toiled to ensure that the legacy of Israel's military offensive against Gaza would not be consigned to the garbage bin of occupying nations obsessed with their feelings of superiority.

Thanks to the Goldstone report, even in Israel voices began to stammer about the need for an independent inquiry into the assault. But shortly after Abbas was visited by the American consul-general on Thursday, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization got on the phone to instruct his representative on the United Nations Human Rights Council to ask his colleagues to postpone the vote on the adoption of the report's conclusions.

Heavy American pressure and the resumption of peace negotiations were the reasons for Abbas' move, it was said. Palestinian spokespeople spun various versions over the weekend in an attempt to make the move kosher, explaining that it was not a cancelation but a six-month postponement that Abbas was seeking.

Will the American and European representatives in Geneva support the adoption of the report in six months' time? Will Israel heed international law in the coming months, stop building in the settlements and announce immediate negotiations on their dismantlement and the establishment of a Palestinian state in the occupied territories? Is this what adoption of the report would have endangered? Of course not.

A great deal of political folly and short-sightedness was bared by that phone call, on the eve of Hamas's celebration of its victory in securing the release of 20 female prisoners. Precisely on that day, Abbas put Gaza in the headlines within the context of the PLO's defeatism and of spitting in the face of the victims of the attack - that is how they felt in Gaza and elsewhere.

Abbas confirmed in fact that Hamas is the real national leadership, and gave ammunition to those who claim that its path - the path of armed struggle - yields results that negotiations do not.

This was not an isolated gaffe, but a pattern that has endured since the PLO leadership concocted, together with naive Norwegians and shrewd Israeli lawyers, the Oslo Accords. Disregard for, and lack of interest in the knowledge and experience accumulated in the inhabitants of the occupied territories' prolonged popular struggle led to the first errors: the absence of an explicit statement that the aim was the establishment of a state within defined borders, not insisting on a construction freeze in the settlements, forgetting about the prisoners, endorsing the Area C arrangement, etc.

The chronic submissiveness is always explained by a desire to "make progress." But for the PLO and Fatah, progress is the very continued existence of the Palestinian Authority, which is now functioning more than ever before as a subcontractor for the IDF, the Shin Bet security service and the Civil Administration.

This is a leadership that has been convinced that armed struggle - certainly in the face of Israeli military superiority - cannot bring independence. And indeed, the disastrous repercussions of the Second Intifada are proof of this position. This is a leadership that believes in negotiation as a strategic path to obtaining a state and integration in the world that the United States is shaping.

But in such a world there is personal gain that accrues from chronic submissiveness - benefits enjoyed by the leaders and their immediate circles. This personal gain shapes the tactics.

Is the choice really only between negotiations and armed-struggle theater, the way the Palestinian leadership makes it out to be? No.

The true choice is between negotiations as part of a popular struggle anchored in the language of the universal culture of equality and rights, and negotiations between business partners with the junior partner submissively expressing his gratitude to the senior partner for his generosity.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Barghouti sees the capitulation to Israeli and US demands by the Palestinian Authority (PS) and its president, Abbas, as "the most blatant case yet of PA betrayal of palestinian rights and surrender to Israeli dictates."This is not only a betrayal of Palestinian civil society, but "also betrayal of the global solidarity movement that has worked tirelessly and creatively, mainly within the framework of the fast spreading BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] campaign, to end Israel's impunity and to uphold universal human rights."

Barghouti calls on the PA to disband - gradually and responsibly, so as not to create power vacuum, and on the PLO to democratize and become the representative of *all* Palestinians from the grassroots up.

Palestinian civil society has strongly and almost unanimously condemned the Palestinian Authority's latest decision to delay adoption by the UN Human Rights Council of the report prepared by the UN Fact-Finding Mission, headed by justice Richard Goldstone, into the recent Israeli war of aggression against the Palestinian people in the occupied Gaza Strip. A common demand in almost all Palestinian statements issued in this respect was for the UN to adopt the report and act without undue delay on its recommendations in order to bring an end to Israel's criminal impunity and to hold it accountable before international law for its war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza and, indeed, all over the occupied Palestinian territory.

Succumbing to US pressures and unabashed Israeli blackmail, the president of the PA himself reportedly was himself responsible for the decision to defer discussion at the Council of the Goldstone report, dashing the hopes of Palestinians everywhere as well as of international human rights organizations and solidarity movements that Israel will finally face a long overdue process of legal accountability and that its victims will have a measure of justice. This decision by the PA, which in effect delays adoption of the report at least until March 2010, giving Israel a golden opportunity to bury it with US, European, Arab and now Palestinian complicity, constitutes the most blatant case yet of PA betrayal of Palestinian rights and surrender to Israeli dictates.

This is not the first time, though, that the PA has acted under orders from Washington and threats from Tel Aviv against the express interests of the Palestinian people. The historic advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice in July 2004 that found Israel's Wall and colonies built on occupied Palestinian territory illegal had presented a rare diplomatic, political and legal opportunity that could have been used to isolate Israel as apartheid South Africa was after a similar ICJ decision in 1971 against its occupation of Namibia. Alas, the PA squandered it and systematically -- quite suspiciously, actually -- failed to even call on world governments to comply with their obligations stated in the advisory opinion.

The whole clause on Israel and Palestinian rights that was to be discussed at the recent UN Durban Review Conference in Geneva was dropped after the Palestinian representative gave his green light. Efforts by non-aligned nations and the former UN General Assembly president, Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, to push for a UN resolution condemning Israel's war crimes in Gaza and establishing an international tribunal were thwarted mainly by the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, causing several prominent diplomats and international law experts to wonder which side the official Palestinian representative was on.

The Mercosur-Israel Free Trade Agreement was almost ratified by Brazil this last September after the Palestinian ambassador there expressed approval, only urging Brazil to exclude Israeli settlement products from the Agreement. With prompt action by Palestinian and Brazilian civil society organizations and eventually by the PLO's Executive Committee, this ratification was averted and the Brazilian parliamentary committee in charge of this file recommended that the government refrain from approving the FTA until Israel complies with international law.

In all these cases and many similar ones, the instructions to the Palestinian representatives came from Ramallah, where the PA government has illegally appropriated the PLO powers to lead Palestinian diplomacy and set foreign policy, conceding Palestinian rights and acting against the Palestinian national interests, without worrying about accountability to any elected representatives of the Palestinian people.

This latest forthright collusion of the PA in Israel's campaign to whitewash its crimes and undermine the application of international law to punish these crimes came a few days after the far-right Israeli government publicly blackmailed the PA, demanding that it withdraw its support for adopting the Goldstone report in return for "permitting" a second mobile communications provider to operate in the occupied Palestinian territory. It therefore undermines the great efforts by human rights organizations and many activists to bring justice to the Palestinian victims of Israel's latest massacre in Gaza: the more than 1400 killed (predominantly civilians); the thousands injured; the 1.5 million who are still suffering from the wanton destruction of infrastructure, educational and health institutions, factories, farm lands, power plants, and other critical facilities, and from the long criminal Israeli siege against them.

It is nothing short of a betrayal of Palestinian civil society's effective Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, with all its recent, remarkable growth and achievements in mainstream western societies and among leading unions.

It is also betrayal of the global solidarity movement that has worked tirelessly and creatively, mainly within the framework of the fast spreading BDS campaign, to end Israel's impunity and to uphold universal human rights.

It is crucial to remember that the PA does not have any legal or democratic mandate to speak on behalf of the people of Palestine or to represent the Palestinians at the UN or any of its agencies and institutions. The current PA government has never won the necessary constitutional approval of the democratically elected Palestinian Legislative Council. Even if it had such a mandate, at best it would only represent the Palestinians living under Israel's military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, excluding the great majority of the people of Palestine, particularly the refugees.

Only the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO, can theoretically claim to represent the entirety of the Palestinian people: inside historic Palestine and in exile. For such a claim to be substantiated and universally accepted by Palestinians everywhere, though, the PLO would need to be revived from the grassroots upwards, in a transparent, democratic and inclusive process that involves Palestinians everywhere and encompasses all the political parties that are outside the PLO structures today. In parallel with this democratic reclamation or popular take-back of the PLO by the people and their representative unions and institutions, the PA must be responsibly and gradually dismantled, with its current powers, particularly the representation seats at the UN and other regional and international institutions, returned to where they belong, to the real representative of all the people of Palestine, the revived and democratized PLO. This dissolution of the PA, however, must at alltimes avoid creating a legal and political vacuum, as history shows that hegemonic powers are often the most likely to fill such a vacuum to the detriment of the oppressed.

The fact is the PA has been gradually and irreversibly transformed since its establishment 15 years ago from a mere -- often powerless, obsequious and coerced -- sub-contractor of the Israeli occupation regime, relieving it of its most cumbersome civil duties, like the provision of services and tax collection, and, most crucially, very effectively helping it safeguard the security of its occupation army and colonial settlers, into a willing collaborator that constitutes Israel's most important strategic weapon in countering its growing isolation and loss of legitimacy on the world stage as a colonial and apartheid state. Israel's hundreds of nuclear weapons and its fourth largest army in the world proved impotent or at least irrelevant before the growing BDS movement, particularly after Israel's acts of genocide in Gaza. The almost unlimited diplomatic, political, economic and scientific support Israel receives from the US and European governments and its unparalleled impunity havealso failed to protect it from the gloomy fate of apartheid South Africa.

Even before Israel's war on Gaza, many unions around the world had joined the BDS campaign, from Canada to South Africa, and from the UK and Norway to Brazil. After Gaza, though, the four years of preparing the ground and spreading BDS, the international shock at the sight of Israel's white phosphorus showers of death visited upon the children of Gaza cowered in UN shelters, and the universal feeling that the international order has failed to hold Israel to account or to even end its slaughter of civilians, not to mention its ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign in the occupied West Bank, particularly in East Jerusalem, BDS leaped into a new, advanced phase. It finally reached the mainstream.

In February, weeks after the end of Israel's bloodbath in Gaza, the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) made history when it refused to offload an Israeli ship in Durban. In April, the Scottish Trade Union Congress followed the lead of the South African trade union federation, COSATU, and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in adopting BDS against Israel to bring about its compliance with international law. In May, the University and College Union (UCU), representing some 120,000 British academics, reiterated its annual support for the logic of boycott against Israel, calling for organizing an inter-union BDS conference later this year to discuss effective strategies for implementing the boycott.

Most recently, this last September, the Norwegian government's pension fund, the third largest in the world, divested from an Israeli military contractor supplying equipment to the illegal Wall in violation of the ICJ ruling. Shortly after that, a Spanish ministry excluded an Israeli academic team representing a college illegally built on occupied Palestinian land from participating in an academic competition. Also in September, the British Trades Union Congress, representing over 6.5 million workers, adopted the boycott, ushering in a new chapter in the spread of BDS that reminds observers of the beginning of the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa. According to concrete, persistent and mounting indicators, Palestinians are witnessing the arrival of their "South Africa moment."

Amidst all this comes the Goldstone report, quite surprisingly -- given the judge's strong connections with Israel and Zionism -- providing the straw that may well break the camel's back: irrefutable evidence, meticulously researched and documented, of Israel's deliberate commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Despite its clear shortcoming, this report presented Israel with the daunting and not entirely improbable prospect of standing trial at an international tribunal, a development that would effectively end Israel's impunity and open the possibility of finally applying international justice to its crimes and persistent violations of international law. In this dire context for Israel, only one strategic weapon in its arsenal could be used to fend off the foretold crushing legal and political defeat: the PA. And it did use it indeed at the right time, in a fatal way, almost killing the Goldstone report.

Ultimately, the failure of the UN Human Rights Council to adopt the Goldstone report is another proof, if any is needed, that Palestinians cannot hope at the current historical moment to obtain justice from the US-controlled so-called "international community." Only through intensified, sustainable and context-sensitive civil society campaigns of boycott and divestment can there be any hope that Israel will one day be compelled to end its lawlessness and criminal disregard of human rights and recognize the inalienable Palestinian right to self determination. This right, as expressed by the great majority of the Palestinian people, comprises ending the occupation, ending the legalized and institutionalized system of racial discrimination, or apartheid, and recognizing the fundamental, UN-sanctioned right of the Palestine refugees to return to their homes of origin, like all other refugees around the world, including Jewish refugees of World War II.

We simply cannot afford to give up on the UN, though. Human rights organizations and international civil society must continue to help the Palestinian struggle to pressure the UN, at least its General Assembly, to adopt and act upon the recommendations of the Goldstone report at all levels. If the UN fails to do so it will send an unambiguous message to Israel that its impunity remains intact and that the international community will stand by apathetically the next time it commits even more egregious crimes against the indigenous people of Palestine. This would gravely undermine the rule of law and promote in its stead the law of the jungle, where no one will be protected from total chaos and boundless carnage.

Monday, October 5, 2009

For years, Israel dismissed the legal applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention to the West Bank and Gaza, claiming that they were and are not under occupation but rather "liberated" or at least "disputed" territories. For the most part, this verbal/legal sleight-of-hand did not and has not convinced world civil society. But it joined other strategies, such as the active erasure of the 1949 armistice "green" line by Jewish settlement and infrastructure projects, in obfuscating reality for a sufficient number of Israelis to uphold a sense of public indignation at accusations of illegality.

Almost as old as the occupation itself, the basic strategy of word-washing and mind-tricks has been reused repeatedly by Israel, also assisting its evasion of International Humanitarian Law as well as other international standards and conventions.

The opinion piece below is a vehement, pointed accusation leveled by journalist Gideon Levy against the extensive group of Israeli philosophers, thinkers, lawyers, jurists and leading academics who have, over many years now, readily and faithfully provided the language and concepts for these strategies of evasion. First and foremost among the conscience-clearers, he writes, is Prof. Asa Kasher who is "the one responsible for that toxic 'IDF spirit' – which holds that when … protecting soldiers, anything goes".

As Levy intimates, despite his seminal importance, Kasher, who "glossed over every transgression during this war" [i.e. Israel's last major assault against Gaza] is just a single, though prominent, instance of the complicity and collaboration of a vast community of intellectuals in maintaining Israel's freedom and capacity to go on enforcing a criminal, horrific occupation and committing war crimes with impunity.

Eliot Weinberger, the American translator and political critic, turns a sardonic eye on the use of white phosphorus by US forces in his widely disseminated anti-war essay "What I Heard about Iraq in 2005," published in The London Review of Books <http://bit.ly/zySZc> (an excellent article by Scott Saul on Weinberger's three decades-long role as a cultural critic appears in the September 30 issue of The Nation <http://bit.ly/Iq3nv>):

"I heard that, in Fallujah and elsewhere, the US had employed white phosphorus munitions, an incendiary device, known among soldiers as 'Willie Pete' or 'shake and bake', which is banned as a weapon by the Convention on Conventional Weapons. Similar to napalm, it leaves the victim horribly burned, often right through to the bone. I heard a State Department spokesman say: 'US forces have used them very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes. They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters.' Then I heard him say that 'US forces used white phosphorus rounds to flush out enemy fighters so that they could then be killed with high explosive rounds.' Then I heard a Pentagon spokesman say that the previous statements were based on 'poor information', and that 'it was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants.' Then I heard the Pentagon say that white phosphorus was not an illegal weapon, because the UShad never signed that provision of the Convention on Conventional Weapons."

As Weinberger's commentary on the US-led war in Iraq emphasizes, Israel is not the only country recently to have used white phosphorus in violation of international humanitarian law -- signed or, as in this case, unconscionably unsigned.

Whoever said that intellectuals are keeping silent? Who claimed that academia is ensconced in an ivory tower? And who dared to think that Israel lacks a moral voice? One day, when historians take the time to examine Israel's brutal offensive in Gaza, otherwise known as "Cast Lead," they will settle a score with political leaders and officers who were responsible for committing war crimes. They will delve deep and denounce the enablers of this nation, the whitewashers and apologists, those who let the Israel Defense Forces win at any cost, even if it was the heaviest moral cost possible.

The main target on their list will be Mr. Ethics, Prof. Asa Kasher, the Israel Prize-winning philosopher and author of the IDF's Code of Conduct. Kasher glossed over every transgression during this war. He's the one responsible for that toxic "IDF spirit" - which holds that when it comes to protecting soldiers, anything goes for the IDF.

This flimsy fig leaf of a man bears as much moral responsibility as the political leaders who made the decisions and the soldiers who carried out their orders. He's the philosopher who removed the reins, the intellectual who whitewashed everything. It is thanks to him and those of his ilk that Israelis can feel so self-righteous. When the world said in near unison, "War crimes," Kasher said, "We are the most moral army in the world, no one is better than us." If this is how a philosopher of ethics speaks, who needs propagandists?

He wasn't always like this. He now says in every possible forum, "If it comes down to a choice between a neighbor and an IDF soldier, the preference is the soldier," and "The lives of our soldiers is of more interest to me than the dignity and well-being of the Palestinians." He has also said that there is no justification for endangering the lives of soldiers in order to prevent the killing of civilians living "next to a terrorist." But he once thought and wrote differently.

As a radical activist at the height of the first Lebanon war, Kasher, who is also one of the founders of the soldiers' refusal movement Yesh Gvul, courageously appeared at a news conference with Nathan Zach, Dan Miron and Yeshayahu Leibowitz. Kasher, who for some reason sees Leibowitz as his patron and mentor, wrote in a letter to Haaretz: "Against the backdrop of news reports on thousands of noncombatant Lebanese and Palestinians who were harmed during Israel's military operations, and given the complete justification of these instances given by the prime minister, it is every decent man's duty to express unreserved opposition to the prime minister's treatment of innocent civilians who are caught in the middle of a war he initiated."

What has changed since then? Kasher has changed. Every decent man continues to believe that unnecessary killing of civilians is a criminal act. The war in Gaza was no less cruel than the war in Lebanon. Universal ethics remain today what they were then. Only Kasher's ethics have radically changed. If only his statements hadn't been so damaging, we could ignore the bewildering change in his positions. Yet for years he has been co-opted by the defense establishment and the IDF as their rubber stamp, solely because of the profound change he underwent. Now he serves as their flack and rationalizer, the philosopher lackey.

In recent days, the United Nations' Goldstone report has been denounced as "anti-Semitic propaganda," and white phosphorus bombs have become "legitimate weapons." Why? Kasher heard from an IDF colonel that when a phosphorus bomb fell near him, nothing happened to him. And what about the 200 children who were killed? They were of "legal adult age - 15 to 18 years - and they took an active part in the war." What about the killing of Dr. Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish's daughters? He is responsible for their deaths. The bombing of hospitals? This, too, is permitted. Kasher knows that terrorists were hiding in their basements.

The IDF Spokesman's Office could not have phrased it any better. The Foreign Ministry's spin doctors could not have deceived any better. This is how Kasher has whitewashed the assassinations and resultant killing of innocent civilians. He also thought that the IDF did not do enough killing in Jenin. The army, Kasher thought, should have warned the civilians beforehand, and "whoever stayed, let the blood be on his head." This is how generals who try to justify their criminal actions speak. But an intellectual? An expert on ethics?

What is the world coming to? Listen to Kasher and look at us. This is the man who symbolizes our morality and this is how we behave. Why should we complain about Defense Minister Ehud Barak? Why should we excoriate Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi? What is so objectionable about a general who planned and a soldier who carried out the order, when above them hovers this toxic spirit that emanates directly from the halls of humanism, philosophy and ethics, and which through mere words provides cover for this awful abyss?

Sunday, October 4, 2009

True colors were revealed at the UN when the PA delegate abandoned a resolution to send the Goldstone report to the Security Council. The effect of this will be to make the recommendations of the Goldstone report, which criticized Israeli as well as Hamas actions during last year's assault on Gaza, much more difficult to implement, both politically and logistically.

As Ali Abunimah documents in the article below, this is just one more recent example of the Abbas leadership's complicity with the Israeli occupation, and its failure to represent the interests of the Palestinians under occupation, a stance generally registered in the media by describing the PA as "moderates."

Just when it seemed that the Ramallah Palestinian Authority (PA) and its leader Mahmoud Abbas could not sink any lower in their complicity with Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the murderous blockade of Gaza, Ramallah has dealt a further stunning blow to the Palestinian people.

The Abbas delegation to the United Nations in Geneva (officially representing the moribund Palestine Liberation Organization) abandoned a resolution requesting the Human Rights Council to forward Judge Richard Goldstone's report on war crimes in Gaza to the UN Security Council for further action. Although the PA acted under US pressure, there are strong indications that the commercial interests of Palestinian and Gulf businessmen closely linked to Abbas also played a part.

The 575-page Goldstone report documents evidence of shocking Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity during last winter's assault on the Gaza Strip which killed 1,400 Palestinians, the vast majority noncombatants and hundreds of them children. The report also accuses the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas of war crimes for firing rockets into Israel that killed three civilians.

Goldstone's report was hailed by Palestinians and supporters of the rule of law worldwide as a watershed; it called for suspects to be held accountable before international courts if Israel failed to prosecute them. Israel has no history, ever, of holding its political and military leaders judicially accountable for war crimes against the Palestinians.

Israel was rightly terrified of the report, mobilizing all its diplomatic and political resources to discredit it. In recent days, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that if the report were acted on, it would "strike a severe blow to the war against terrorism," and "strike a fatal blow to the peace process, because Israel will no longer be able to take additional steps and take risks for peace if its right to self-defense is denied."

Unsurprisingly, an early ally in the Israeli campaign for impunity was the Obama Administration, whose UN ambassador, Susan Rice, expressed "very serious concerns" about the report and trashed Goldstone's mandate as "unbalanced, one-sided and basically unacceptable." (Rice was acting true to her word; in April she told the newspaper Politico that one of the main reasons the Obama Administration decided to join the UN Human Rights Council was to fight what she called "the anti-Israel crap.")

Goldstone, whose daughter has publicly described her father as a Zionist who loves Israel, is a former judge of the South African Supreme Court, and a highly respected international jurist. He was the chief prosecutor at UN war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

That the Goldstone report was a severe blow to Israel's ability to commit future war crimes with impunity is not in doubt; this week bolstered by the report, lawyers in the UK asked a court to issue an arrest warrant for visiting Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. That action did not succeed, but Israel's government has taken extraordinary measures in recent months to try to shield its officials from prosecution, fearing that successful arrests are just a matter of time. Along with the growing international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions, the fear of ending up in The Hague seems to be the only thing that causes the Israeli government and society to reconsider their destructive path.

One would think, then, that the self-described representatives of the Palestinian people would not casually throw away this weapon. And yet, according to Abbas ambassador Ibrahim Khraishi, the Ramallah PA shelved its effort at the request of the Americans because "We don't want to create an obstacle for them."

Khraishi's excuse that the resolution is merely being deferred until the spring does not pass muster. Unless action is taken now, the Goldstone report will be buried by then and evidence of Israel's crimes -- necessary for prosecutions -- may be harder to collect.

This latest surrender comes less than two weeks after Abbas appeared at a summit in New York with US President Barack Obama and Netanyahu despite Obama abandoning his demand that Israel halt construction of Jewish-only settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Also under US pressure, the PA abandoned its pledge not to resume negotiations unless settlement-building stopped, and agreed to take part in US-mediated "peace talks" with Israel in Washington this week. Israel, meanwhile, announced plans for the largest ever West Bank settlement since 1967.

What makes this even more galling, is the real possibility that the PA is helping Israel wash its hands of the blood it spilled in Gaza for something as base as the financial gain of businessmen closely linked to Abbas.

The Independent (UK) reported on 1 October:

"Shalom Kital, an aide to defense minister Ehud Barak, said today that Israel will not release a share of the radio spectrum that has long been sought by the Palestinian Authority to enable the launch of a second mobile telecommunications company unless the PA drops its efforts to put Israeli soldiers and officers in the dock over the Israeli operation." ("Palestinians cry 'blackmail' over Israel phone service threat," The Independent, 1 October).

Kital added that it was a "condition" that the PA specifically drop its efforts to advance the Goldstone report. The phone company, Wataniya, was described last April by Reuters as an "Abbas-backed company" which is a joint venture between Qatari and Kuwaiti investors and the Palestinian Investment Fund with which one of Abbas' sons is closely involved. Moreover, Reuters revealed that the start-up company apparently had no shortage of capital due to the Gulf investors receiving millions of dollars of "US aid in the form of loan guarantees meant for Palestinian farmers and other small to mid-sized businesses" (See "US aid goes to Abbas-backed Palestinian phone venture," Reuters, 24 April 2009).

Just a day before the Abbas delegation pulled its resolution in Geneva, Nabil Shaath, the PA "foreign minister" denounced the Israeli threat over Wataniya as "blackmail" and vowed that the Palestinians would never back down.

The PA's betrayal of the Palestinian people over the Goldstone report, as well as its continued "security coordination" with Israel to suppress resistance and political activity in the West Bank, should banish all doubt that it is an active arm of the Israeli occupation doing tangible and escalating harm to the Palestinian people and their just cause.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.